Prolific songwriter Joe Purdy finds freedom in independence, inspiration in the South

Here’s the thing about record labels: They often provide resources, including a marketing plan, a publicist who reaches out to the media, folks who know how to get a song on the radio. As a musician, doing your own thing comes with certain rewards, but it also brings challenges. How do you get your songs heard?

Joe Purdy seems to have figured that out. Though he remains fiercely independent, the prolific singer-songwriter has self-released 12 albums in about a decade. (They’re on sale at iTunes for $7.99 each, by the way.) But placement in shows like Lost, Grey’s Anatomy and House have brought Purdy’s music into millions of households and helped him sell thousands of albums. He’ll be in Birmingham to perform at WorkPlay on June 9. The Milk Carton Kids will open at 8 p.m., and tickets are $15. The show is also part of WorkPlay’s Artists for Alabama series, and a portion of proceeds will benefit the American Red Cross.

I initially got Purdy’s voicemail when I called for our interview, and I couldn’t help but laugh as he told callers that he lied, he probably wouldn’t call them back right away because he wasn’t very good about that sort of thing. When he returned my call minutes later, we joked about the dangers of voice mail and the joys of iPhones (we’re both new iPhone owners) before our wide-ranging, rambling conversation carried us into as much conversation about music in general as his work in particular.

Joe Purdy: I have that reputation among my friends and family. That’s the No. 1 criticism I get. I never call anyone back. I’ve gotten much better about it, but that’s still really bad.

[After recently purchasing an iPhone] it let me record my new thing and I was like, I’m just going to tell it straight this time. The one wonderful thing about the iPhone is you can actually see the list of people that called you. That was my biggest problem. I don’t want to listen to 30 voicemails before I decide whether to delete or skip before I get to the next one. I just don’t have the time.

BBS: And especially as Southerners, there’s so much small talk that we go through before getting to the reason we called. That’s one of the charms of the South, but sometimes you’re in the middle of something and honestly don’t have time for anything but business.

JP: It’s so true. Especially growing up where I did, and the folks that I’m calling back, old friends or whatever, there’s a bunch of that before you even get to what you needed to talk about. And that thing about not wanting to be rude to people. I don’t want to be the guy who says, ‘Hey, can you hold on a sec,’ [aside] ‘You do that, you do that.’

BBS: Oh my gosh, and I appreciate that. I’ve had people do that during interviews, and it’s awful. I know musicians are often asked the same questions over and over in each city, and that’s got to be a hassle. But publicity also comes with the territory.

JP: I have a different conversation with everyone I talk to because it’s just getting to know people and talking to people and having a conversation. As soon as I feel like I’m being interviewed, I clam up.

BBS: Ha, well speaking of interviews--I’ve been wracking my memory this morning, trying to remember if you’ve played Birmingham before and I’ve just missed it, or if you’ve played here at all since I’ve been in town.

JP: I don’t believe I’ve ever played Birmingham. I was trying to remember that this morning as well, if I’ve gone through there in an opening gig. Some of those are a little bit more of a daze because you drive 16 hours to sound check, play your gig then leave. You’re driving yourself in a van and everyone else is on a bus. I’ve been through Birmingham a bunch, but I haven’t played there.

BBS: I’m glad I haven’t missed out, then. WorkPlay Theater is going to be the perfect setting. It’s a great little room, awesome acoustics. I’ve seen musicians literally stop between songs to comment on how great everything sounds. And it’s just the right size: big enough for a few hundred people, but small enough that it’s an intimate room.

JP: The world needs more rooms like that.

BBS: I agree. There’s a place for arena shows—Paul McCartney, Radiohead, U2. But there aren’t many bands I want to see in that setting.

JP: I can think of a few people I would definitely still go see if I had the time and the chance. I wouldn’t [play there] if I could. Having people come see me, I’d play wherever they want me to, but I really enjoy intimate rooms that are small enough for people to listen and not really get carried away.

BBS: Your music, and really your career trajectory, seems to make sense in that setting. I know many people have heard of you through TV placements, and that’s indirectly how I heard your music as well. Though I don’t think I’ve seen an episode of a show you’re your music has been in, but one of my best friends did and told me I had to check out your music. He was right. I suppose television allows you the freedom to get your music heard while retaining your independence?

JP: That’s the big payoff, I guess, is being able to look in the mirror every day and do what I want. I’m not really good under a boss. It’s just something I’ve never mastered. It helps when I’m the boss. It goes a lot more smoothly.

BBS: Does that also play a role in how prolific you’re able to be?

JP: Probably yeah. Definitely. This isn’t true with everyone, so I don’t want to generalize. But in my experience with any kind of structured label, but mainly major label, big machine, old-school type template, is they want you to do what they want you to do. A lot of times that includes the kind of song you want. They want you to write a certain kind of song and record it a certain way. I don’t have time for that. There are too many songs for that, to stop my whole thought process and flow, to stop and think, ‘Let me make this a song people will make out to, make a little less interesting so people like it more.’

I’ve found the greatest tool for me—maybe the one thing I figured out really early on and always thought should be true from a common sense standpoint—is if I’m doing what I love, I could be living in a cardboard box and be pretty happy. It’s not always going to be easy, it’s always going to be a little bit of a struggle in one place or another. But at the same time, if I’m able to do what comes naturally to me and what I love to do, if I’m doing art for arts sake and not for fame or fortune or bullshit, I’ll have the best chance of succeeding. That’s the other thing about not giving your rights away [to a label]: When you sell a record, money comes to you. It’s just like running a small business.

Then I get to make more music, I get to travel and I get to do all that. I’ve been going broke on touring for years and years, but I would always make sure that even though I was barely breaking even or not even breaking even at all on tours, I would just make sure I could stop in some town with the boys and make a record for three or four days. As long as I could make a record out of it, I knew it would come back tenfold. And it always will. At least for the foreseeable future, the more music you make, people have the opportunity to find the record before that and the record before that.

BBS: I can relate to that. Though we work in very different fields, there are parallels. Only a lucky few are going to get rich, really rich, doing what we do. But we’re able to make a living doing what we love.

JP: Rich in life. It’s so much more fulfilling. … Cheesy thing, but I just find it to be so true. Material things will only get you so far, please you for a while, but if you can’t find any joy in the things that don’t cost money, your life is going to go down the toilet.

BBS: Speaking of living simply—I just got renters insurance a few weeks ago, because so many people I know lost so much in the tornadoes here. As I took inventory of everything I own, I was surprised by how quickly it added up.

JP: I’m actually home in Arkansas for three more days until I go to Boulder. We had the first real scare we’ve had in a long time right by my house. There’s a tornado that came through … I took a look at all my stuff, all my instruments, gear, furniture … It was nice to come off tour, a day off a tour I’ve been on six weeks, and I had a suitcase packed with all the clothes I needed for a show, two favorite guitars.

I headed over to my folks’ place where we had a bunch of people getting together because my folks have a large basement that everyone could get together in. I took my two dogs and two guitars and [clothes and] said goodbye to everything else. I’ve been out for six weeks and I haven’t thought about a single thing I owned. I haven’t needed any of that. It’s fine. [When the storms passed, everything was OK.]

BBS: You took the things I would miss, too—music and my pet, well, in my case, my cat. But then, a full third of the value of what I own came from books and music. Those can be replaced, and I have most of my music on my iPod. But I would really miss those things if they were gone.

JP: I have a record player where I can set it up to burn down to disc any record that I play. I try to back up my collection as much as I can. Not for that reason, but that’s a good reason too.

Such a music lover like you, that’d be a large loss. I understand, absolutely. I think I’m getting to the point, the truth is I can talk all day long all going, but I would miss my record collection. I started listening to music strictly because of my father’s record collection. When we got our first VCR back in the day, which was the size of the Cadillac back then, we literally had to make room in the living room to have a VCR. He moved his stereo, this really great stereo he’s had since he got out of high school, and his 300 records, he moved them into my room. I was 11 years old.

As soon as I pulled out that first record and he taught me how to take them out of the sleeve, and how to lower the needle onto the record, I was a goner, man. The first album I played was [James Taylor's] Sweet Baby James, just on accident. That crackle started, that acoustic guitar, and that was it.

I have a bunch of really great old bluegrass records and old Motown records and old blues records, that collection I got from him. And so many I’ve got since, because I still only listen to vinyl at my house.

My grandma was so into Johnny Cash that my dad was sick of it by the time he got out of the house. [So I bought those]. Then you get into things that your folks weren’t into.

BBS: Confession: I don't have a record player. I need one.

JP: Hell yeah, are you kidding me?

BBS: I don't have a good reason, either! I just know I'll spend so much more money on music once I give in and get one.

JP: Yeah you are, but you’re going to love life so much more. A girl like you, you’ve got to have a record player. You’ve got to. You’ve got to have a record collection. Do you have any good record stores?

BBS: There's this place up the street, Charlemagne, that has a lot of used stuff, some new stuff and will of course order anything you want. It's one of those places you go to flip through the records and CDs for hours. You've got to climb up a staircase to get there, and the walls of the staircase are papered with concert posters.

JP: I don’t know how much you travel, but I find that vinyl is something I get really, really lucky with and I’ll end up finding records for $1 or $2, used records that are really great, and a good record store will [offer] that much more. And the truth is they’ll rarely put them out if there’s something wrong w ith them. And most people take care of them.

I’ve gotten starter kit records, like record players and what I call the “start up kit” which is maybe anywhere from 10 to 20 records that I’ll hand pick, and I’ll be able to do that for $50. I’m talking Neil Young Harvest, and Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers, the good stuff. [Bob Dylan] The Times They Are A-Changing, Aretha Franklin Gold, and you just come across them. When you find them used, theyre’ so much more prone to being cheap that you can really score and get a bunch of music. Especially when I was in Los Angeles, there were a few record stores that you could spend an entire afternoon in.

BBS: Has moving back to Arkansas and being in the South affected your songwriting or your music in any way?

JP: I’ve been here about three years, had a place here. I haven’t been here all that much compared to what you should be for a normal life, but at the same time … I’ve been very affected by it. Going through this recession in a real place--I wouldn’t put LA down, there’s so many great things in LA. Nearly nobody is from LA, there are people that come from other places. There are wonderful people there. Especially at times like this the weather is golden in California, and I miss that when you’re trying to clean up the limbs and trying to chop down the trees that got knocked down.

But actually having gone through this recession in a real place--without the Hollywood bubble, nothing’s really wrong when you’re there, and I know it because I was there for eight or nine years. You’re never really affected by the things that happen in the rest of America. But I think being in a place where watching friends go through these hard times and even some family members too, struggling and having to regroup and figure out new ways to get through life, after getting through life in a different way for so long, it hit me in a different way. I felt like I really felt it and witnessed it firsthand. That was largely impactful, especially in my Fourth of July record, which is the one before this last one, it was a lot about that. On my last couple records, I’ve gone a lot into a Great Depression theme because I see so many parallels in it. It’s easier for me to disguise modern-day troubles in older stories. I don’t think I’m very good at writing modern-day things. I don’t like hearing about a cell phone in a song.

BBS: It makes me cringe, even if I’m listening to a song on my phone!

JP: Exactly. I’m down with the world and the way technology has progressed. But at the same time, that’s not where I want my music to come from. I like the escaping of the world as it is now, because I’ve always felt like I should’ve been born in another time. The way I get that is to frame what I say in a more timeless setting. I’ve always tried to make records that remind me of the records I love, and all the records I really love were made before 1970. It’s an older school thing, for sure.

Being able to see first hand about what’s actually going on in the country has been huge. To be a little bit more hands on in life—I’ve spent this time building stuff, working outside a bunch. My first winter we had a 30-year ice storm, and I spent two months after that, literally every day, I lost seven trees, my favorite tree. I had to remember how to use a chainsaw, then I had to go get a bigger one because there was so much work to do, burn piles, drag stuff with a tractor, clean up the land.

That and building. I love being outside and I love working with my hands. It was nice to get back to doing things that made me feel like a man, actually taking care of things myself, taking care of my land and my house. If I need something, build it, if I need something fixed, fixing it myself. I really needed that in my life to be reminded that I don’t have to live in that fairy tale world of the gardener comes to do this, and then you pick up your dinner every night at a different rest—all of this I love, by the way. But I feel a little bit more wholehearted and a little bit more well rounded as a person if I can be hands on. I’ve always been pretty self reliant.

Unfortunately, sometimes you really do have to pick one or the other, because if you tour a lot and try to make records a lot, some of these things if I get carried away with doing them, it takes away time. If I focus on what I’m best at, I can work on cars a little but I’m not the best at that. I can run a front loader or build a shed) but I’m not the best at it. But what comes naturally to me is making music, and I should probably stick to that a little bit more. That’s what I’ve been doing recently.

You can in the same token, of sort of also discovering things that you’re also really good at you enjoy doing, you can also make yourself miserable doing something you’re not good at just because you’re stubborn. If you find the thing that you love and excel at more than anything else, that’s the biggest battle that most people don’t get to conquer. I’ve been realizing that more and more—just keep moving on.

BBS: A few months ago, a friend of mine asked what my top five American rock bands were. I struggled with it, because I kept thinking of bands and remembering they were British. But then, there's a certain amount of pride that often comes with listening to music from your state or region. Even if the themes aren't explicitly Southern, I often identify with music from the South.

JP: It’s an authenticity or a nostalgia, familiarity maybe, that makes you feel like you’re home. I completely agree. If somebody knows what they’re talking about or a certain place, they get it right. They can sell you and it makes you feel like you’re there. Which is one of my favorite things about music.